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<center>
<h1>
Announcing Grid Engine version 5.3beta1</h1></center>

<div STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">Grid Engine 5.3beta1 as mentioned <a href="http://gridengine.sunsource.net/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=1187&listName=dev">here</a>
recently, is now ready. A corresponding source branch has been created
and the binaries for all platforms we have access to have been compiled
and are available from the <a href="http://gridengine.sunsource.net/project/gridengine/download.html">download
page</a>.</div>

<div STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"></div>

<div STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">Among other enhancements, Grid Engine 5.3beta1
provides the following improvements over the previous alpha1 version:</div>

<ul>
<li STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">
A new Enterprise Edition dispatch algorithm is available improving the
old dispatching scheme towards more intuitive and entitlement oriented
results. The old dispatch algorithm is still available via a compatibility
option. See the sge_conf(5) on-line manual page for more information.<br>
<BR></li>

<li STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">
Various scalability enhancements have been made to enable the handling
of larger numbers of jobs, hosts and queues. In particular, the performance
of the scheduler component has been improved greatly.&nbsp;<br>
<BR></li>

<li STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">
The spooling of array jobs has been optimized to allow higher numbers of
tasks in a single array job.&nbsp;<br>
<BR></li>

<li STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">
Several configuration parameters which formerly had to be set in the qmaster_params,
schedd_params and execd_params lists are now an explicitly visible part
of the cluster configuration (see sge_conf(5)). Examples are the FQDN parameter
or the Reschedule Unknown field.&nbsp;<br>
<BR></li>

<li STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">
Reschedule buttons have been added to the job and queue qmon dialogs to
initiate rescheduling of jobs.&nbsp;<br>
<BR></li>

<li STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">
Various bugs have been fixed. Among them:<br>
<BR></li>

<ul>
<li STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">
Job submission via qsub with empty job arguments does not crash grd_qmaster
anymore.</li>

<li STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">
Enhanced qrsh to accept the -hold_jid and -h options.</li>

<li STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">
Huge fragmented array jobs no longer cause a qstat segmentation fault.</li>

<li STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">
Default limits are now in effect even if the corresponding complex attributes
are not managed at a host or queue level.</li>

<li STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">
Fixed cases in which weird characters appear in the qmon scheduler configuration
dialog; avoid corresponding segmentation violation.</li>
</ul>
</ul>

<div STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">Please note, that the included documentation
has not yet been brought up-to-speed. The man pages are probably the most
accurate piece but still contain known defficiencies. You should also refer
to the <a href="http://gridengine.sunsource.net/project/gridengine/howto/howto.html">HOWTOs</a>
and the <a href="http://supportforum.sun.com/gridengine/appnotes.html">application
notes</a> for further viable information.</div>


<p STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">Please help us improve the quality of Grid
Engine and use the beta version as early as possible in your Grid Engine
cluster.
<h2>
Still to come:</h2>

<div STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in">A beta2 phase will be coming in the January
time-frame after further enhancements have been finished, added and tested.
The final 5.3 release is tentatively planned for March/April 2002. Stay
tuned!</div>

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